Vada Maddox
Vada Maddox is a writer and independent advocate for mental health, men’s mental health, and chronic illness awareness. As a survivor of both childhood domestic violence and multiple abusive adult relationships, Vada writes from a place of deep understanding—infused with compassion, lived experience, and trauma-informed perspective shaped by years of healing work. Her writing voice is direct, empowering, and grounded in truth. She believes in the power of using personal pain as a force for connection, education, and change. Vada is especially passionate about advocating for male survivors, who are often overlooked or shamed into silence. As someone living with Fibromyalgia, POTS, and HEDS, she also weaves chronic illness advocacy into her work to illuminate how mental and physical health intersect in the lives of survivors. Vada writes for the ones still in it. For the children with nowhere to run. For the men who think no one would believe them. And for anyone who’s ever thought, “Maybe it was my fault.”
He Never Hit Me: And Other Lies We Tell To Survive.
You learn early on which bruises make people pay attention.
The ones that swell. The purple ones. The ones that make strangers tilt their heads and say, “Are you okay?” Those bruises are undeniable.
But the other ones?
The ones you can’t circle with a marker.
The ones that live in your nervous system instead of your skin?
No one prepares you for those.
No one prepares you for how much it will cost to rebuild a version of yourself that someone else tried to erase. Because the damage done behind closed doors—the manipulation, the gaslighting, the emotional erosion—is just as real. Sometimes worse.
There’s no cast for psychological abuse.
There’s no bandage for chronic self-doubt.
And there is no hotline number for the days you wake up and don’t recognize who you’ve become.
We don’t talk enough about the subtle kind of violence.
The quiet kind.
The kind that doesn’t raise a fist, but still manages to rip someone apart.
He never hit me. That’s the one we hear all the time, right?
As if that’s the only threshold for trauma.
“He just called me names when he was stressed.”
“She just needed to know where I was all the time.”
“He didn’t mean to control me—he just loved me too much.”
“She only said that stuff when she was drinking.”
Survivors become so fluent in excuses they stop even recognizing the language of harm.
Especially when the harm comes from someone who says they love you.
Mental health and domestic violence don’t exist in separate spheres.
They live together, tangled, layered, feeding off one another in silence. Abuse isn’t just physical. It changes how you see yourself, how you trust others, and how safe you feel in your own mind.
And that damage lingers.
You stop answering texts. You cancel plans because your chest tightens at the thought of leaving the house. You flinch at certain tones of voice. You feel guilt for missing someone who treated you like a punching bag or a possession. You over-explain. You apologize when no one’s asking you to. You try to “be better” so you never end up “too much” again.
These are symptoms of trauma. These are the bruises no one can see.
I’ve heard every version of the question:
“Why didn’t you just leave?”
“Why did you stay so long?”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
And to that I say:
Why did someone feel so entitled to hurt me in the first place?
That’s the question that never gets asked.
The truth is, most survivors stay because it feels safer than leaving. Because they’ve been told no one will believe them. Because they’ve been financially isolated. Because they’re trauma bonded. Because there are kids involved. Because there is nowhere else to go.
And sometimes, they stay because they still love the person who’s hurting them.
It’s messy. And it’s real.
And if you’ve been there, I don’t need to explain it.
You already know.
If you’re healing from this kind of pain, I want to tell you something that took me a long time to believe:
You don’t have to prove how bad it was in order to deserve healing.
You don’t need photographs. You don’t need validation from your abuser. You don’t need anyone else to say, “Yes, that sounds like abuse.”
If it broke you, it’s worth healing from.
That’s the only metric you need.
Some of the strongest people I know have never been hit once—but they have been undone by years of psychological warfare. Their stories matter. Yours does, too.
You might feel frayed. You might feel ruined. But I promise—grace lives even in threadbare places. Healing doesn’t mean becoming who you were before.
It means becoming someone stronger, softer, wiser, louder.
It means reclaiming your name from the silence that tried to bury it.
And maybe, just maybe, becoming someone your younger self would look at and whisper,
“You got out.”
If you’re in danger or need help:
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U.S. Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7233
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Text “START” to 88788
You're not alone. You were never crazy. You were just surviving.
And now, maybe, you're ready to start healing.